


People like to tell you what you're gonna be

by towardsmorning



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Minor AU, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best forgery he had ever written was himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	People like to tell you what you're gonna be

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a fic I repeatedly told a variety of people I wasn't going to write. Then I stayed up 'til 9am writing it one night. GO ME. As ever, I'm trans but not _quite_ this stripe of trans. Obviously this doesn't try and represent any kind of universal experience- that would be ridiculous- but if you should have any issues regarding this fic feel free to hit me up.
> 
> Gonna save the thoughts for after the fic this time, because they'll make more sense after it's been read.

The best forgery he had ever written was himself, Moist thinks, better than anything he'd done as a conman. He'd gone through dozens of names. Albert hadn't been the first or most developed or even the best, though as of yet he supposes that it's been the last, so it tends to stick in the mind more than any of the others. Naturally he's left all that behind him now. Naturally. Albert was hanged; there's nobody left to write anything new. Just good old Moist von Lipwig, twisty as a corkscrew and twice as handy to have at your disposal.

"I cannot believe," Adora tells him, blowing smoke with the kind of single-minded dedication that made even golems shuffle their feet nervously, "that you didn't change it when you had the chance." One final drag and the cigarette finds its way under her heel, stabbing down with enviable precision; he watches it with one part trepidation and two parts admiration. He'd never understood how people walked in those things, and Spike turns it into an artform.

"Yes, well," he says, aware after a moment that she'd expected a response. "It didn't exactly seem pressing at the time."

She fixes him with the stare of a woman still stuck with the name Adora Belle Dearheart, who had too many fond memories of the father whose choice it had been to dream of changing it without a very good reason and whose life had thus far failed to throw any such reasons up. Spike has extremely eloquent stares. It's one of many things he admires about her.

"Some people," she snaps, and the matter is dropped.

*

He'd been born Moist von Lipwig to parents who were by all accounts doting, however unwise they may have been regarding the start in life they thought children deserved. And he _hadn't_ given much thought to changing the name outside, of course, never using it again if at all possible, which wasn't exactly the same thing. It wasn't as though it was a particularly indicative name, mostly by virtue of not actually being a real name at all. The real problem, he'd always thought, was that it was distinctive.

People _remembered_ the person who came through calling themselves 'Moist', never mind the 'von Lipwig' afterwards which, once outside Uberwald at least, honestly just added insult to injury. First impressions were important. They said that thirty seconds with a man would tell you all there was to know about him; this wasn't accurate, but people believed it enough that it had its own kind of truth. It would tell you all you were ever likely to know about him unless you really put the effort in.

Which was handy for a conman, but Moist hadn't always been a conman. Sometimes keeping track of all the places he had made those first impressions at as falling into either the 'before' or 'after' camp became tiring. It was easier once he ditched the name. It had been by far the most distinctive thing about him, and nobody seemed inclined to connect the young woman in possession of the frankly unfortunate name they'd met the first time around to him once he started telling them his name was John, or Harry, or something equally inane.

None of them had ever needed to be permanent. It wasn't in his line of business.

*

He enjoys performing. There's absolutely nothing better than a crowd, especially one that can turn on a pin between cheering you on and baying for your blood. Everything else is just trimmings, or at least that's what he thinks when he's in _front_ of the crowd.

Of course there's one less layer to it all nowadays. No need to make sure he's got his limp right, or remembered the glasses, or that he turns around when he hears the right name. There's still plenty to do- if he's being himself and "himself" is a liar, then it's not as though it has to be easy, or worse, boring- but it's still him doing it and nobody else. He tries to find the thrill in standing, as exposed as he's ever been, with his own name and his own face in front of people, at least one of whom might have an iconograph at any given time. Then he finds that this is actually a bit too thrilling and crosses the line into nerve-wracking, never a good place to be when you're in the business of selling to people, and puts that aside.

There are still things to do even without the personas. He focuses on them. Get the walk right, square your shoulders, pitch your voice and never worry about those couple of inches you wish you had. It makes it feel more normal, but now he's thinking it about himself and not whoever he's playing, feeling like a fraud takes on an uncomfortably personal bent.

*

He'd bought a razor when he was seventeen, and laughed off any remarks about it being useless for someone with a baby face like his. "Call it a future investment," he'd said, and kept laughing when they didn't shut up because a man who can take a joke at his own expense is a man people like to keep around for the sake of their own self esteem. Safer to smile and nod.

On the bright side he never actually has to replace the razor, which certainly saves him money. It's a positive from that perspective, albeit only from that one.

*

He expects Adora to put up considerably more of a fuss when he tells her, and is equal parts relieved and confused when she doesn't. Then he wonders if he'd explained correctly. One small, traitorous part of him is almost starting to regret not running when he'd had the chance, as quickly as he pushes it back down. Adora just fixes him with the level stare she has and strikes a match against the wall with practiced ease.

"I heard you the first time," she says, lighting up what has to be her fifth cigarette in half an hour. He never happens to see her buy them; they just seem to... show up. And she never runs out, either. Her depths are ineffable. Possibly her pockets are magical. "There's no need to go on, you know."

There's no real way to respond to that without seeming petulant. He flounders for a moment, and she sighs, taking pity on him.

"Forget it, Slick," she says in a tone he's coming to recognise as fond, flicking ash. She moves to stand in front of him. There's a moment where her stare could take the paint off a wall, burning a hole straight through him, and then she softens. Slightly. She kisses him, which is still enough of a novelty that he completely loses his train of thought.

He forgets it. There's no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth, especially one as liable to bite back as Adora. There's certainly no questioning or dissuading her.

*

A good suit was important. Moist didn't hang onto a lot of things, his lifestyle not being well-suited to large numbers of possessions, but a good suit would often prove to be worth considerably more than its weight in gold. If the clothes made the man then a well-tailored suit was the equivalent of being crafted by an artisan. The key to any lie was in the presentation. Wear the right cut and that was all anybody saw; you were a rich man in that suit, no matter how much money you happened to be in possession of.

People noticed the suit and not the person underneath it. He'd foregone a lot of things in life. He wouldn't forego that.

He'd bought his first not long after running away, second hand or, realistically, probably closer to fourth hand. It had been miles too big and he'd been terrible with a needle, though a long career of detail work with his hands had made him better since. The man he'd been then had been less one made by an artisan and more one scribbled by a toddler having a temper tantrum but, and this was the important thing: he _had_ been a man. These things were all about your perspective, Moist found.

*

Adora gets ready in the morning with the same kind of single-minded viciousness he admires in her the rest of the time. She attacks her hair like it's personally offended her. No wonder it always stays in place; it's probably afraid to do anything else. He had wondered about that before.

He watches her sometimes, doing her bun almost entirely one handed while she smokes her first cigarette of the day. It's all a bit mystifying. Secrets of the feminine mystique, and all that, or whatever they call it. Mostly it's just bloody impressive.

She doesn't help him with his jacket, or tie his tie for him. Frankly if she tried he'd be a a little worried. He's heard that wives sometimes do that sort of thing, but then, Adora had explained that she wasn't his wife as much as Moist was her husband, so that explains it. He'd rather do it himself anyway.

He buttons his jacket up and glances in the mirror- the razor is still sat on the sink, because Adora had found it funny. "So you _can_ hold something sharp without panicking," she'd said. "We can use it as a letter opener, maybe."

He does his tie up with a flourish; it's the equivalent of an underscore before he steps out the door, a complete work finished.

**Author's Note:**

> I worried a little about using the imagery (i.e. the concept of performance/persona/fraud) I used here, because of the possibility of unfortunate implications- but I figured that it was the kind of way _Moist_ would see it, regardless of how fair he was being to himself or how accurate. It's the sort of language he understands, after all.
> 
> I wrote up why I wanted to write this at the bottom of [this](http://ayries.tumblr.com/post/35464940162) post, should anyone be interested.
> 
> Title from 'Are You Satisfied?' by Marina & the Diamonds.


End file.
